1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an audio signal processing apparatus and an audio signal processing method that can find suitable applications in the field of amplifying audio signals of a plurality of channels and outputting them as audio sounds from a plurality of speakers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Audio amplifiers adapted to be supplied with audio signals of a multiple of channels such as 2-channel or 5.1-channel from a disc player such as a Compact Disc (CD) player or a Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) player and amplify the audio signals of the channels before sending them to corresponding respective speakers are popularly known.
The audio amplifier provides the listener or listeners listening to the audio sounds of the plurality of channels with an effect of correlations and superposition that makes the listener or listeners, whichever appropriate, feel as if sound images were localized at positions other than those of the speakers including inter-speaker positions.
As such audio amplifiers, there are proposed amplifiers that are adapted to localize a sound image at a target position by outputting same reproduced sounds from the speakers arranged at the opposite lateral sides of the target position and also outputting the same reproduced sounds from a speaker arranged above the target position where the sound image is to be localized with a slight time delay when it is not possible to arrange a speaker directly at the target position because a large television set is placed there but it is desired to localize the sound image of the reproduced sound at that target position (see, for example, Jpn. Pat. Appln. Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-59897 (FIG. 2)).